For A2-B1 Learners.
Because the last weeks of school deserve more than a worksheet, they deserve a real challenge.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
✅ A complete problem-based mini-unit for A2-B1 ESL secondary school learners,
✅ Two-phase structure: students build a holiday, then fix it when everything goes wrong,
✅ 5 thematic vocabulary sets used actively throughout both phases
✅ Group work supported by a free consensus placemat (download below)
✅ Print-ready — open the file, print, run
Table of Contents
The last few weeks of school are their own kind of challenge. Your students are mentally on a beach somewhere.
Their energy is high, just not pointed in the right direction. And running a standard lesson feels like swimming against the tide.
But here’s the thing: that energy is actually an asset. Students who are already thinking about holidays are primed for exactly one kind of task. Give them a real job in English!
The Perfect Holiday Agency is a problem-based summer ESL unit where your A2-B1 learners step into the role of travel agents. They plan real holidays for fictional clients, then deal with the chaos that always comes with travel.
Vocabulary, teamwork, critical thinking — all in one unit that runs itself once you’ve explained the rules once.
1. Why Problem-Based Learning Works for the Last Weeks of School
Problem-based learning (PBL), first formalized by Barrows and Tamblyn (1980) in medical education, places students in authentic, open-ended situations where language is a tool, not a subject. Research in second language acquisition has consistently shown that communicative tasks — where learners must use the language to complete a real goal —produce stronger vocabulary retention and more durable grammatical development than drilling exercises. For the last weeks of school, the stakes are different. Students’ intrinsic motivation to engage with abstract tasks is at its lowest. But give them a genuine role: travel agent, client manager, crisis solver; and the dynamic shifts. They’re not practising English. They’re using it to solve something that matters within the activity. Vygotsky’s (1978) concept of the Zone of Proximal Development also plays out naturally in group tasks like this one. Students work slightly above their independent level, supported by peers and by the structured resources in the unit. The flashcard sets stay on the desk. The worksheets scaffold the thinking. The teacher circulates rather than leads. The result: a class that is focused, collaborative, and genuinely engaged, precisely because the task makes demands that ordinary worksheets don’t.
2. Your Free Group Work Placemat
Best for: any group task requiring consensus, A2-B1, groups of 4.
Cooperative learning only works when every student’s voice is visible. Without structure, group work often defaults to one dominant voice and three silent ones. The free placemat prevents that from happening. Each student has their own idea box and they write their answer independently first, before any discussion begins. Then the group uses the two shared spaces: “We agree” and “We don’t agree”. What stays in the “We agree” space moves forward into the final plan. This format draws on Johnson and Johnson’s cooperative learning research (1994), which identifies individual accountability as the key factor separating productive group tasks from passive ones. Every student writes. Every student contributes to the discussion. The placemat makes that non-negotiable. It works for Phase 1 of this unit, and it works for any group task you run, regardless of topic or level.
3. Phase 1 — Build the Perfect Holiday
Best for: A2-B1 groups, 25-30 minutes of active work
The class divides into 4 groups. Each group is a travel agency. Each agency receives a client profile card — a fictional character with specific holiday wishes: a family looking for a beach holiday on a budget, a couple wanting cultural visits and fine dining, a group of teenagers after adventure activities. The agency’s job: design the perfect 7-day itinerary for their client. They use the 5 sets of thematic flashcards as a working reference throughout:
🏖️ Beach: sand, sunscreen, towel, waves, umbrella
🏨 Accommodation: hotel, hostel, campsite, bed and breakfast,
✈️ Transport: plane, train, ferry, camper van,
🎫 Activities and visits: museum, zoo, surfing, hiking,
📆 Planning holidays: passport, travel guide, to book online,
Students fill in their Phase 1 worksheet: destination, accommodation, transport, daily programme. The placemat runs alongside this: students note their individual ideas first, then use the “We agree / We don’t agree” spaces to build their group’s final plan.
At the end of Phase 1, each agency presents their holiday package to the class. This adds a natural speaking element: groups describe their client, their destination, and their itinerary. The other groups are the audience and they already want to know how each client’s holiday turns out.
What makes this phase effective: every decision requires vocabulary. There is no way to complete the worksheet without accessing the flashcard sets. The cards are not an intro activity put away after five minutes. They stay on the desk and they stay useful throughout.
4. Phase 2 — The Holiday Crisis
Best for: 20-30 minutes of active work.
The clients have left. The holidays have started. And then something goes wrong. Each agency receives a holiday crisis card:
- The hotel is overbooked. Find alternative accommodation tonight.
- The flight is cancelled. How does the client get there?
- The planned activities are all closed for a local festival. What replaces them?
Groups must revise the holiday they built in Phase 1, solving the crisis using the same vocabulary, adapting the same itinerary. The constraint is real: they cannot start from scratch. They have to fix what they built. This is where the vocabulary genuinely consolidates. Students are no longer recalling words from a list. They are deploying them under light, enjoyable pressure, that is to say the pressure of solving a problem that matters within the game.
The energy in the room during Phase 2 is something else. Students argue (in English) about whether a hostel or a campsite is the better solution. They negotiate. They refer back to the flashcards without being asked to. The language is working the way language actually works.
5. What Students Actually Practice (Without Realising It)
This unit covers all four language skills in an integrated, communicative framework:
- Vocabulary: 5 thematic sets, referenced actively across both phases,
- Reading: client profile cards and crisis cards, level-appropriate,
- Writing: Phase 1 itinerary worksheet and Phase 2 revised plan,
- Speaking: group negotiation, consensus building, final presentations,
- Critical thinking: problem-solving under real constraints.
It is not a filler activity for the last week. It is a genuine communicative task that uses English the way English gets used, with fun in the classroom.
6. What’s Inside the Mini-Unit
Everything you need to run both phases:
🌴 5 sets of thematic flashcards: beach, accommodation, transport, activities, planning,
📒 Teacher’s notebook: step-by-step instructions, timing guide, group management tips,
📝 Phase 1 worksheet: instruction sheet (one per agency),
📝 Phase 2 worksheet: crisis resolution sheet (one per agency),
🧳 4 client profile cards: one per group, different wishes and constraints,
🚨 Holiday crisis cards : one per group, triggering Phase 2.
Print-ready. No extra prep, no materials to source. Open the file, print, run.
7. Grab Your Free Resource
Start with the free group work placemat and use it in Phase 1, or use it for any group task in your classroom this week.
It works for every level, every topic, any time you want every student’s voice in the discussion.